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Collaboration Tools
Taking the 'A' out of Asynchronous
7/1/2008
"It's a good way to have one conversation rather that several, and it lets students from different sections talk about the same assignment or article," she says, likening the software to a "virtual student lounge." Willy adds that in many cases, students who've never met face-to-face strike up friendships in the chat room and frequently respond to each other's questions before she can even interject. "Once I get them talking to each other, they usually take it from there," she adds.
Kara Monroe, executive director of Ivy Tech's Center for Instructional Technology, agrees. "You'd be amazed by how much a bunch of students collaborating with each other in one of these chat rooms can improve the overall lesson," she maintains.
Other Players, Other Products
THE VENDORS MENTIONED in this article aren't the only big-time players in the synchronous online collaboration space focused on higher education; a number of other companies recently have attracted major buzz, as well. Here's only a sampling of what's happening in this market space.
Adobe, for one, is a newsmaker: While the vendor's Acrobat Connect solution enables educators to set up on-demand virtual meeting rooms where students can communicate in real time, spokespeople for the company disclose that a new version of Connect is expected to be released before most schools open their doors in September.
Another big player in the synchronous space is Elluminate, which through its Elluminate Live! product offers a different kind of real-time meeting environment, complete with the capability to host breakout sessions. According to Gary Dietz, the company's product marketing manager, these sessions can serve as one-onone tutorials for individual students who might be struggling with particular concepts. "It's all about working with students to help them learn at a pace that's good for them." Dietz notes that Elluminate Plan, a new component of the product suite due out this summer, is aimed at helping educators better strategize curriculum.
Some additional vendors in the world of synchronous collaboration certainly are familiar names: WebEx, now a part of Cisco Systems, pioneered the web conferencing space, and continues as a leader in this area. This past January, global research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan named Citrix 2008 North American Web Conferencing Company of the Year. And-- no surprise to anyone-- Microsoft has jumped into the collaboration arena with its SharePoint technology, now being enthusiastically adopted by MS devotees.
For more on the subject of collaboration, see "Collaboration Makes a Comeback," CT March 2008.
At the University of Houston- Clear Lake, Tyler Delane, an adjunct professor in the School of Education, utilizes a different technology for a similar purpose. There, as part of his online course in web development, Delane turns to a synchronous collaboration tool from Vyew to run office hours in which he helps his class of mostly pre-service teachers work on their HTML. The office hours are scheduled once every two weeks. From his home office, Delane logs on, opens up a chat room, and waits for students to join him with questions. As students stop by, Delane has them upload their HTML code and then discusses with them what changes they can engineer to make the code run more smoothly. He also asks students to explain the different ways they did things, so that others can understand an alternate approach.
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